


Every Little Broken Piece of Me

by TheDemonCrowley



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: All that comes along with that, Eating Disorders, I'm projecting don't come for me, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Lars Gottlieb is a terrible parent, Other, Self-Hatred, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 17:45:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17771360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDemonCrowley/pseuds/TheDemonCrowley
Summary: Hermann is in control.He has his life under control.He's perfectly fine, thank you.





	Every Little Broken Piece of Me

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a stream of consciousness thing while incredibly upset and having a hard time.
> 
> I'm someone who suffers from disordered eating, I'm autistic, disabled, and mentally ill. I'm speaking from what I know.
> 
> If you have an eating disorder, please don't read this. I know why you're here. Be good to yourself. Be better. Get through every day that you can. I know where you are and no matter what you think you are worth something.

See the thing is. The things is, Hermann is aware that this is all about having a sense of control.

 

He knows when it started.

 

He knows why it started.

 

He knows he shouldn't do it.

 

He knows exactly the damage it causes.

 

He's read as many books as he can get his hands on about the psychology of it, finds it incredibly interesting in fact.

 

He consumes all content about it; documentaries, movies, articles, newsletters, but nothing that explicitly blames the people who do it because those people can shove it.

 

It started when he was a child.

 

He'd always been a skinny little thing and he'd always been ahead off his peers. Those were his two constants in his life.

 

That and how Lars Gottlieb was disappointed in anything and everything regardless of it would be considered a fear by literally anyone else in the world.

 

He's also always had bad joints. Bones grinding and popping out of place. Joints aching in the winter and swelling in the summer and making him feel sick. Dislocating his shoulders by ramming them into walls “by accident” just to keep his head together lead to him having calcium deposits throughout the entire area and the ability to pop his bones back into place.

 

The accident wasn't as easy as his hip just getting popped out of place (which is always an annoying inconvenience). It popped his hips out of place and completely shattered it on one side.

 

He has a high pain tolerance but physical therapy is worse than the paint. From the accident.

 

He has to walk with a cane at fourteen and it sets him even further apart from his peers. It doesn't make him want to die on it's own but it just makes his life that much harder.

 

Bed rest entails doing his studies and eating because after the feeding tube (the pain meds kept him from keeping anything down) he's starving for anything and everything that isn't the uncomfortable feeling of room temperature sludge moving through the tube. (Regardless of what anyone says, he could feel it, he's fucking autistic for God's sake). It filled up his stomach without the satisfaction of chewing. They'd given him a little extra because he was skinny to begin with. They kept telling him that his body was using up all of the extra calories to heal and that it was good for him. He'd told them of course it was, he's not a fucking idiot. They'd overlooked him saying that because he was lashing out “from the trauma and pain from the accident”.

 

Nutrition isn't maths or astronomy or physics (although it does require math partially), it's something he uses to soothe himself when he's bored. He likes to read up on the need advancements in the field.

 

He eats chips and pizza and sandwiches, peanut butter straight out of the jar even though he sort of hates it and makes him gag sometimes. The oil of the peanuts sets off his autism as does the thickness of it but it tastes good.

 

Father's disappointed in his disappointing son and is more and more and more so as his son gains weight. Hermann hadn't really noticed how far it had gone because he floats in and out of full cognizance due to the narcotics he's on for the pain. It pushes him out of his brain, out of his being.

 

Dissociation, the act of disconnecting. Being unable to feel being in one's body. Most likely (obviously) connected to the way his father yells and yells and yells and hates and hates and hates his son.

 

Hermann dumps cookies (an entire sleeve of chips ahoy, not the chewy kind because just looking at them sets off his texture hell and the feeling in his fingers and his mouth makes him want to rip his throat out) into his gullet and pretends he doesn't exist (because he doesn't really, he lives in the liminal space of being a real human worthy of living and breathing and being a ghost that clutches at life with cold fingers).

 

Anyway.

 

Hermann gains weight and becomes even more of a family disappointment to everyone.

 

He hates physical therapy (even if it's an escape from the cold and disappointed looks his whole family gives him) because they congratulate him on his weight gain.

 

They say it to his father too who sighs in this tight way and Hermann hates the physiotherapists so viscerally in that moment that it  _ chokes _ .

 

It starts with a simple Google search.

 

It's just on how to lose weight when you can't exercise (he's not risking the ability to walk in the future) and it leads him to a special place full of special people.

 

It's a message board full of tops and it's  _ insane  _ they're  _ not _ mentally well, and they clearly understand they're destroying their bodies.

 

They talk about the clarity in their brains that Hermann misses because the narcotics fucking  _ suck _ .

 

He's not stupid.

 

He does it the correct way, calculates his calories and his bmr and his tdee and how much he's been eating compared to how much he should be. He drops to eating a little under what he should (the surplus he was eating makes him feel sick he's fucking  _ disgusting _ ). He finds tips on how to stop the hunger pains and keep him from being weak from eating when he shouldn't. He increases his caffeine intake and avoids the kitchen at all costs.

 

The weight starts to come off but not fast enough so he drops his calories down more (just a  _ little _ more than he should, it's  _ fine _ he tells himself) and then there's…

 

There's that clarity they talk about.

 

It's just barely there, but it's there at five hundred calories less than he should be eating if he was in a coma.

 

He goes back and he reads more tips (tips that aren't healthy or  _ sane _ ) on how to shove the hunger away and he implements them.

 

He drinks glasses of water that make him feel bloated and like people can hear him sloshing around and pees every hour.

 

He's freezing all of the time, even more than he used to be when he was skinny as a kid and it's annoying.

 

He wears fuzzy socks to bed, a blanket tucked under the three already on his bed at the foot of it just so he can keep his feet warmer.

 

His father is still disappointed in him (because Hermann is  _ disappointing _ and  _ always _ will be) and yells at Hermann.

 

Hermann breaks the clarity in his brain and eats two servings at the dinner his father puts on the table and it makes him want to  _ die _ .

 

He goes on to the other side of the website the side that is arguably worse for you (though neither is  _ good _ for you in any way, shape, or form), the side where they put food down and hit eject.

 

There's a secrecy there, the people who do it say you shouldn't and they don't give tips on how to start but they give tips on how to keep going and he can gather the rest of what this requires through common sense (isn't that a laugh?).

 

He downs two glasses of water until there's no more mashed potatoes and he's just throwing up bile.

 

It took him thirty minutes for him to get his gag reflex up and running (he's trained his throat to dry-swallow the horse pills they call narcotics) and he makes ugly, guttural sounds when it come up and he chokes a bit on it (they all say starchy foods are the worst along with anything sharp like chips and popcorn) and his body is shaking from the adrenaline and there's tears in his eyes and thick saliva coating his mouth and fingers and his whole bathroom smells like vomit and his stomach is cramping but  _ holy fuck _ .

 

His brain is crystal sharp and floaty at the same time and he feels like he can  _ breathe  _ again.

 

He rinses and gargles with salt water, flosses and brushes his teeth, swishes with mouthwash.

 

He drinks water even though it looks in his stomach and he makes a note to buy electrolyte drops because there's  _ no way  _ he's  _ not  _ doing this again.

 

There's rules he sets up for himself, rules he must follow so he doesn't completely destroy his body. No cakes or cookies or bread or heavy carbs to throw up. Coffee, meds, and water for breakfast, tea or coffee and water for lunch (zero calorie sweetener with a touch of almond milk only). No food for as long as possible. No doing it multiple days in a row if possible because he needs his voice to stay the same. Water, electrolyte drops, and a warm heating pad after puking.

 

Cold water only when he pukes because it makes him feel pure.

 

He doesn’t really ever have a life, or friends (he fucked that right up with Newt when he first met him in person, he’d freaked out at the restaurant because there’s nothing he can eat and he’d panicked because he’s not good enough and Newt would hate him and he fucking does a bit) or anything outside of his work for years.

 

The breach opens and monsters come out.

 

His life since the breach opening is coding, puking, the dark green of his chalkboards, the sound of the chalk clacking, a yellow line down the middle of the lab and arguing with Newton.

 

He doesn’t think Newton notices. Too caught up in his own mental illnesses, his ADHD, his mood swings, and downing concerningly excessive amounts of coffee and energy drinks.

 

Newt doesn’t say anything about the lack of eating, he’s too focused on his own work with all of the hours they do, trying to “save the world and be a rockstar, dude” as Newt says. The only comment he has on Hermann’s baggy clothes is calling him a “stuffy old professor with the fashion sense of a test-tube”. He doesn’t notice the cuts and knicks and teeth impressions on Hermann’s hands every few days or how his jaw and neck look swollen directly after stressful days (a new kaiju and more budget cuts).

 

Hermann always brings Newt lunch from the canteen (always steals his fruit serving if it’s pears or those tiny little oranges that are easy to peel but burn the cuts on his fingers). He forces Newton to sleep when it’s been too long and keeps the coffee pot hostage when Newton’s fingers are shaking too much to hold a scalpel straight.

 

Newton can not be controlled.

 

He is a variable that cannot be accounted for in any way and it grates on Hermann and his carefully planned routines and schedule and ideas for his life but Newton isn’t afraid to say things to him and Newton is there with him intellectually and he respects Hermann’s opinion on things and his things. (He drops things over the line pettily sometimes but never more than a few feet because he’s not going to fuck Hermann and his feelings about sounds and smells and textures. Kaiju guts require rock music and Newton knows this and plays it and Hermann wishes he hadn’t fucked them all up because of him and his food habits.)

 

Walking into the lab to find Newton seizing and bleeding from his nose is a radical variable that he never wanted and never thought he would experience. He gets angry when Newton explains himself to the Marshall and his hands shake when he feeds Newton something to bring his blood sugar up and gives him water and watches him go off to find illegal Kaiju specimens.

 

He wants to hit eject and he can’t. He has to do calculations and shove down the desperate worry he has for Newton and Mako (who they’ve watched grow up and basically consider her to be their niece) and there’s Sasha and Aleksis who were their friends and then the triplets who they don’t really spend time with and Raleigh and Herc and Chuck and Tendo and everyone else in his life and he can’t think about them.

 

Offering to save the world with Newton isn’t hard even though he will be baring everything dirty and disgusting and unhealthy about him and how he just wants Newton to be his. Newton is the only one who could ever understand him and the only person Hermann thinks would ever be able to fit into his brain.

 

Drifting is like drinking three energy drinks in the span of forty-five minutes (which he now knows what it feels like from Newt’s brain).

 

Newt’s brain is a hyper, anxiety-ridden mess.

 

He can feels the imbalance of chemicals and the love for his friends and family and  _ Hermann _ his love of Hermann is all-consuming.

 

He feels Newt being bullied for being weird and having no friends but his uncle and looking for worms in the dirt in the rain and rallying for women’s rights in science and getting the tattoos that cover him collar bone to hip bone front and back and teaching people older him biology (Hermann knows how it feels for maths) and he can feel Newt rooting around in his brain and curling up in there like there’s always been a spot waiting for him (and maybe there has been).

 

Involuntarily throwing up is a thing he almost forgot was possible. It’s acrid and uncomfortable and tastes of citrus from the two oranges he ate (that Newt exclusively refers to as “cuties” and refuses to let Newt take them from his lunch unless he asks Newt for them that way) and it burns up the back of his nose. Newt hands him the handkerchief that Hermann had given him for his nosebleed earlier and Hermann can feel all of the memories that Newt touched in his brain. The bullying and the vomiting and playing with his shuttle and his father’s disappointment and how much he hates himself and how much he regrets fucking everything up when it comes to Newt.

 

There isn’t time to speak of anything, too busy getting themselves to (the ‘dome, Newt supplies, his presence admittedly calming in Hermann’s brain). They orbit around each other, never more than a few feet away, shifting into one another’s space as if they were one body.

 

The world is saved.

 

Newt hugs Hermann, startling him and he grips Newt and they breathe as one being. He pulls back because he knows about Hermann’s thought on public displays of affection and people touching him (because he hates himself) and then a little later he feels Newt thinking of throwing an arm around Hermann’s shoulders and he pushes into it, pushes further into Newt’s side and feels the warmth that rushes between them mentally and physically.

 

Newt doesn’t say anything about the puking and restricting and Hermann doesn’t say anything about the self-harm. What Newt does say (well, not say as much as push into his brain) is the warm fluttery feeling that Hermann still makes him feel. He pushes an apartment got the two of them, pet rats and a cat and a small dog that curls up at their feet in bed and movie nights. Glow-in-the-dark stickers in their correct constellation placement on their living room ceiling and Hermann pressing his cold toes to Newt’s legs in the middle of the night, Hermann looking at him softly as he pats Newt’s hair down before work to fix the bird’s nest there.

 

Hermann’s heart flutters and his hands are clammy with cold sweat when he grasps Newt’s in his own. Newt smiles and squeezes it back.

 

For once, Hermann is excited about the lack of control he has in his future.

 

It’s not just his own anymore.

  
It’s  _ theirs. _


End file.
